Category Archives: Loons

The Bitch shares with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg a love of the looniness created when nutty ideologues are allowed access to pen and ink. To wit, a story in Sunday’s Washington Times by paranoid Israeli PR flack Eliani Benador (of the Shomron Council in the occupied West Bank) posits that Huma Abedin, Weiner’s Arab wife and cradle Clintonista, has been groomed by the Clinton-Soros Global Conspiracy to, in her words, “advance the cause of Islam in America, including a politically positioned marriage to Congressman Anthony Weiner.” [Emphasis added.]

Because Anthony Weiner is such an influential Jew in America. He’s so influential that, according to media outlets too numerous to link to, members of his own party can’t stand him, refuse to defend him, and even line up to call for his resignation. Now that’s influence!

In fact, the more the Bitch thinks about it, the more she thinks Eliani Benador is really a nom de plume of Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Pam Brady, the people who brought us “Team America World Police.” Because, really, doesn’t Ms. Benador’s rant sound like the ravings of the puppet Kim Jong Il?

UPDATE

Benjy Sarlin at TPMDC reports that the entire story has been taken down. Read about it here. Hee Hee!

The Bitch was going to write today about how this piece, by Dana Milbank, should have been added to yesterday’s “Little Humor” post. But the more she thinks about it, an unpleasant theme whispers in her ear…stay tuned.

Once upon a time, when he was in the US House, Senator Pat Toomey had a reputation as a conservative, but sane, lawmaker.

Not so any more, it seems. On Wednesday Senator Toomey spoke to the American Enterprise Institute about the debt ceiling issue, saying:

It is “absolutely false” to claim that failing to raise the debt limit by the deadline would “equate to a default on our debt at all.”

That is, of course, news to Tim Geithner. And we can meet our current obligations, says Senator Toomey, by paying for them out of expected tax revenue. No need to borrow — so what’s all the fuss about? Milbank tells us:

Without borrowing, we’d have to cut Obama’s budget for 2012 by $1.5 trillion. That means even if we shut down the military and stopped writing Social Security checks, the government would still come up about $200 billion short.

Ooopsies! Looks like we’ll have to raise some taxes! Replies Toomey, Tea Party stalwart, to Milbank’s direct question, “I’m not interested in raising taxes.”

Well. Senator, the Bitch isn’t interested in paying her taxes either, but she pays them. Some things you just gotta do.

Some things just must be commented upon…Rick Santorum tells talk-show host Hugh Hewitt that Senator John McCain, who as a Navy flier spent 5+ years in a Vietnam prison where he was tortured repeatedly, just doesn’t understand “enhanced interrogation,” that calm-sounding phrase that actually means torture.

Here is the fatal exchange:

HH: Now your former colleague, John McCain, said look, there’s no record, there’s no evidence here that these methods actually led to the capture or the killing of bin Laden. Do you disagree with that? Or do you think he’s got an argument?

RS: I don’t, everything I’ve read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation. And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative. And that’s when we got this information. And one thing led to another, and led to another, and that’s how we ended up with bin Laden. That seems to be clear from all the information I read. Maybe McCain has better information than I do, but from what I’ve seen, it seems pretty clear that but for these cooperative witnesses who were cooperative as a result of enhanced interrogations, we would not have gotten bin Laden.

That if you, as an elected official, decide to put the moves on your wife’s best friend while she, her husband and children are living with you and your family temporarily; and if/when you get found out and the husband approaches you for “financial support,” Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is NOT, NOT, NOT the guy to use as an intermediary to negotiate a settlement. After all, he wanted John Ensign, the recently resigned GOP Senator from Nevada, to buy Doug and Cindy Hampton’s NV house for approx. $1.5 million; and then give the Hamptons an additional $1 million or so “start-over” money so they could relocate far away from the Ensigns and get on with their lives. The nerve!

(In case you were wondering, the Mark Ensigns — the Senator’s parents — eventually came through with $96K, a payment the Senate Ethics Committee finds dubious under the law, since it’s probably an illegal campaign contribution. It has referred the matter to the Federal Election Commission; actually, it’s referred the entire Ensign investigation to the Justice Department for their own investigation. And people say ethics don’t count on Capitol Hill!)

Additionally, Senator Coburn failed in his central duty of keeping John Ensign’s dick in his pants, as Ensign said in his resignation speech:

My caution to all of my colleagues is to surround yourselves with people who will be honest with you about how you really are and what you are becoming, and then make them promise to not hold back no matter how much you may try to prevent them from telling you the truth. I wish I had done this sooner, but this is one of the hardest lessons I have had to learn.

Right. Are we clear on this? It’s not up to John Ensign to police his own character, it’s up to his posse, which in Ensign’s case were a bunch of highly aggressive devout Christians living in the infamous C Street townhouse owned by a little-known religious organization called “The Fellowship.” Turns out they are the same folks who bring you the National Prayer Breakfast. (Sex and eggs amongst the bacon. Who knew?)

And, not that Ensign gives his bros any credit for this, they DID tell him “what [he] was and what [he] was becoming,” the randy Senator just didn’t give a damn.

In one passage of the report, Ensign’s “spiritual adviser,” Tim Coe, called Ensign from outside of a hotel room where the senator was with Cindy Hampton and told him: “I know exactly where you are. I know exactly what you are doing. Put your pants on and go home.

In a piece done no favors by the New York Times headline-writing person (“Gingrich Run Reflects His Sense of History”), Matt Bai tells us that this time, Gingrich is serious about running for President.

The thing you have to understand about Newt is that he is, by training and temperament, an avid historian, and he is as true a believer as you will ever find in the concept of destiny.

Lovely.

According to Bai, Gingrich dealt with his adolescent inferiority complex by fantasy:

He imagined himself — and, reasonably or not, still does — as a lead protagonist in the history of his own time, a consequential character in the grand American narrative.

But wait! There’s more:

In particular, Mr. Gingrich is a devotee of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who meditated on the concept of “departure and return” — the idea that great leaders have to leave (or be banished from) their kingdoms before they can better themselves and return as conquering heroes. One of Newt’s heroes, the French general and statesman Charles de Gaulle, embodies just this kind of romantic narrative, having spent 12 years out of power before returning to lead his country. So does Ronald Reagan, who traveled the country after losing his bid for the Republican nomination in 1976, then came roaring back to win it all four years later.

All this, despite having never been elected for anything on a national level (beyond his old US House seat — GA-06), as well as having three living wives, two of whom he divorced while they were experiencing chronic illness; in the case of his first wife, Jacqui, he served her with divorce papers while she was in hospital recovering from surgery. He met his third wife, Callista Bisek, when she worked for the House Agriculture Committee, and carried on with her while, as Speaker of the House, he helped lead the Republican investigation of President Bill Clinton for perjury in relation to Clinton’s alleged relationships with Paula Jones and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Another good-to-know tidbit, Gingrich is the only US Speaker of the House disciplined for ethics violations. additionally, in the summer of 1997, the House GOP leadership — GOP Conference Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Republican Leadership Chairman Bill Paxon (R-NY), House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX –many of them former Gingrich disciples and allies, decided he had become too toxic to remain as Speaker, so they tried to depose him. One of them (that would be YOU, Dick Armey, current Tea Party leader) chickened out and squealed. Upshot: Gingrich stayed on, only to resign a year later after he was blamed for the GOP’s five-seat loss in the 1998 midterm elections. Here’s what he said at the time of his tantrum resignation:

“I’m willing to lead but I’m not willing to preside over people who are cannibals. My only fear would be that if I tried to stay, it would just overshadow whoever my successor is.”

Cannibals! If he couldn’t handle the US House, how will he handle North Korea?

More Bai:

When we talked briefly about the presidency in 2009, Mr. Gingrich said that he had been thinking a lot about Mr. Reagan’s journey and his own. Mr. Reagan, he said, found his way to the presidency after emerging principally as the leader of a re-energized conservative movement. Mr. Gingrich considers his own following on Twitter and Facebook to be an emergent movement, too — although it’s not clear exactly what strand of Republicanism he represents.

Indeed. So. What we have here, me hearties, is a delusional former politician who wants to be taken seriously by his party and his country. He is what passes for a “substantial thinker” in the GOP today. Chew on that one.

Howard Kurtz notices the GOP’s over-reliance on nutters (and worries it will cause the party to implode in November 2012):

The regular Tuesday meeting of the House Republican caucus grew heated last month when some of the more seasoned lawmakers said it was time to “shut up,” as one put it, about the birther issue.

The caucus has 85 new members, more than 30 of whom are new to elective office—“the kamikazes,” they are privately called—and some took strong exception to being urged not to talk about President Obama’s birth certificate. “Well, I don’t think he was born in this country,” one freshman snapped.

More Kurtz:

Former Newt Gingrich aide Tony Blankley says “both parties have their extremes, and their leadership can’t embrace them. But you never want to disperse the energy of your supporters. It has to be managed.” Maybe, but Democrats have never enabled the Bush-caused-9/11 nuts this way. [Emphasis added.]

Nor do they. Dem lawmakers may privately agree with the Code Pinkers, the 9/11 conspiracy theorists and the “Indict-Bush/Cheney-for-war-crimes” types, but they know these causes are electoral losers, and so far, they have managed to keep the lid on. Not so the GOP, who found the whole “Obama as Scary Other” meme spectacularly successful as a base (and bank account) energizer.

Well, the Bitch sez, let the crazies roar! As long as the GOP doubles down on manipulating Americans’ fears of the Other — immigrants, Muslim Americans, the poor, the President, anyone who doesn’t look like Me — they deserve to be the minority party. So let ‘em spend their crazy dollars where they will and sit back and watch the implosion.